


lessons in cartography

by Caecelia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: rarepair_shorts, M/M, smoking!Snape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:03:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caecelia/pseuds/Caecelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur has to read the map before Severus can burn it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lessons in cartography

**Author's Note:**

  * For [condwiramurs (Aurys)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurys/gifts).



> Written in the context of the rarepair_shorts (LJ) summer wishlist fest for condwiramurs's request: Snape/Arthur, maps and geography, fire, cartography of soul.

With a deceptively careless flick of his wand, Snape enlarges a plain sheet of parchment to the size of a large map. Another flick and ink scratches reminiscent of Snape's own slanted scrawl and representing the whole of the United Kingdom, its geography and roads and towns, begin to self-write themselves onto the grain.

" . . . information Severus has come by at _great_ personal risk, I might add," finishes Dumbledore, giving Alastor a rather pointed look.

Alastor snorts and takes an equally pointed swig from his hipflask.

Snape, the only person standing in the room, ignores them both, his expression controlled and revealing nothing but boredom. For a moment, Arthur wonders whether Snape sees the on-going argument about his loyalties as a form of lowbrow entertainment. But then Snape slips a hand into a pocket of his worn, grease-stained robes and pulls out a Muggle cigarette. And as Arthur watches, Snape lifts the cigarette between the slender (trembling?) fingers of one hand and noiselessly snaps two of the other. The paper flares – he raises the glowing, softly crackling stick to colourless lips – Arthur holds a breath, vividly imagining what it feels like to have Muggle tobacco burning down your lungs – and drags.

Molly sets her lips in a disapproving line; Alastor, shifting his considerable weight and still scowling, grumbles her thoughts aloud. "You could at least stop foisting your foul habits on the rest of us, Snape."

"You're one to talk," Snape drawls, dark eyes snapping to Alastor's hipflask and lingering there suggestively. Behind the already thick and admittedly acrid cloud of smoke, Arthur can see his lips twitching around the cigarette.

"Look at that," Arthur murmurs, suddenly noticing arrows moving over the map – arrows with the scrawled-out names of Death Eaters or Aurors swaying next to them – _such elegant magic_. "Rowle and Yaxley are on the move again –"

"And they are not alone," Snape interrupts, exhaling. He does not glance at the extraordinary map he has created, or at any particular member of the Order. Arthur knows better than to think Snape is not watching them all like a hawk or even reading their minds, but he _feels_ unobserved and that gives him a relative sense of freedom. And so he takes a closer look through the heavy veil of smoke, watching as Snape's throat bobs once, as his lips compress into a grimace. "Bellatrix has an on-going bet that she will kill the most Muggles by the end of the week."

"We'd have figured that out on our own," mutters Alastor, a tic going off beside his mutilated nose.

"What strategy do you suggest, Severus?" Remus asks quietly, coming around Molly's chair to get a better look at the map. The hem of his jumper is in tatters, as Molly will surely notice . . . Arthur stifles his pity, then looks up to the yellow half-moons beneath and the fine wrinkles fanning out from Snape's eyes and finds it re-emerging in full force. These boys are ten years younger than he is, he thinks, and yet Remus is already going grey, while Snape . . .

Snape is the kind of boy who never quite managed to grow up – a deformed Peter Ban, Arthur thinks, recalling the Muggle story. Yes, that's what he is, the kind of boy who still throws tantrums at his elders and refuses to wash his hair and yet possesses powers so remarkable while remaining so suspicious of adult influence that it's well nigh impossible to convince him of the virtues of growing up. Not that Snape is aware of this or interested any child other than himself, of course . . .

He's speaking now, quiet and mocking and lingering unnecessarily on unexpected syllables, and Arthur, armpits suddenly breaking out into a sweat, finds himself concentrating on the face his children have so often cursed. Cartography, he thinks, eyes mapping the shadowed crevices between those angular cheekbones, the contrasting high arch of a matted brow, the ineffable silence of shadowed eyes. Like the map spread out on the table, Snape is made up almost entirely of oily blacks and burnt yellows and ashen whites, and he is so gaunt that he would seem two-dimensional were it not for the broken crook of his nose –

A cloud of smoke curls from Snape's mouth, and something in Arthur curls too, until he's hot and dizzy and _disoriented_ , as though someone had Apparated him out of a cool, civilized room into a merciless desert. Thank Merlin he's seated . . . Suddenly parched, he licks his lips. They're startlingly dense and crinkled, as though he had been sucking on one of Snape's cigarettes –

Remus is leaning away from Molly, expression concentrated. "The plan seems sound," Arthur hears him say, but it is only when Remus' eyes seek out his own for confirmation that he snaps back into the conversation.

"I'd say – the same," Arthur says, and feels immediately guilty for agreeing to a plan he never listened to in the first place.

Moody snorts, but there follows no verbal disagreement, so the meeting is soon adjourned. Arthur is so busy surreptitiously casting cooling charms on himself and regretting the loss of the beautiful map – it had burst into flame at a swish of Snape's wand – that he doesn't quite hear what Molly is saying until she is speaking into his ear.

"—don't think I can help with those documents, Arthur, and there's simply so _much_ to be done at home–"

"It's alright, Molly," he says, guessing at her gist. "Go on, and I'll come along as soon we finish here."

She beams, the wide, wonderfully familiar curve of a well-loved mouth, and pecks him on the cheek. He smiles as she pushes back from her chair and turns to leave the kitchen with Moody and Tonks and Kingsley and Dumbledore –

"Arthur."

The congealed sweat beneath his armpits resumes its dripping down the sides of his chest. Arthur forces a smile before swivelling in his seat in what he hopes seems a relaxed, friendly manner.

"Severus. So I didn't quite catch all the details, I'm afraid –"

Snape exhales a crown of smoke, the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile that is designed, Arthur thinks, to make the receiver feel two feet tall.

"—but I'm ready to do whatever it is you need me to do—"

"I'll see you two later," says Remus, the last to gather his bags. He gives Arthur an unexpectedly sharp glance before heading towards the door.

"Ah, right. Hopefully soon," Arthur calls out behind him, unable to miss Snape's smirk or the way those eyes fail to leave his face. He frowns, wanting to stand and level out the playing field between them a bit, but inherent awkwardness glues him to his seat. "So, er, Severus. What –"

"You are employed by the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, are you not?"

Bemused, Arthur merely nods.

Snape takes a last drag of his cigarette before viciously grinding the butt against the table. Arthur cannot help but stare at his hands – too skeletal and stained and yet so sure, so skilled. "Then you are the best-equipped to assist me in filing reports against the Death Eaters who just hexed a section of the M3 motorway into bucking off all the cars."

"Really?" Arthur says, so busy trying to imagine what a bucking motorway would _look_ like that only Snape's immeasurably sour expression clues him into the fact that many Muggles must have died. "Oh dear."

Snape curls a lip, and Arthur feels as though someone had smacked him painfully in the gut. "Shall we begin?" says Snape, voice still rough from the cigarette.

Arthur nods, not trusting himself to speak.

Another sweep of Snape's wand and the table is covered in protocols defined by that unmistakeable scrawl. Snape, explaining in a quiet voice, comes round to stand beside Arthur – Arthur who takes in a steadying breath. Unfortunately, it only reinforces that Snape reeks of what he projects, of snuffed flames and blazing oil and seared tobacco and suffocating ash –

Another breath, and Arthur is now wishing this boy away with his fire eyes and hair and mouth –

Those eyes inspecting him now, ugly and pitiless and only _seeming_ cold because there is a kind of heat too febrile and incandescent to fall within the normal categories of sensation –

"You are distracted," Snape says with a touch of impatience.

"Ah, well," Arthur sucks in a breath, attempts a smile. "Long day."

"I see," Snape replies, suddenly cool.

Arthur squirms, thinking he should say something about how they should continue and yet –

And yet, he thinks, glancing up into the black silence –

" _You're_ distracting me, actually," he admits, soft and surprised, because that was _not_ what he had intended on saying. But he won't take the words back, not even if Snape chooses to laugh at him . . . And Snape's eyes widen just enough that Arthur finds himself standing, despite knowing what Snape sees – a pudgy family man with ashen red hair –

He lifts his chin . . .

Snape does not move, but his eyes – Arthur hears a hitch in his throat, a roaring pressure in his ears as those eyes flicker and begin to diagram him in a manner not entirely, not _limited_ to being derogatory or objectifying. Nor does Snape's voice explode in caustic sparks as he asks, hair-raisingly quiet: "Is that so?"

"Yes," Arthur says, amazed by the breathlessness in his own voice.

Snape lifts his eyes to Arthur's own, and yes, they are truly aflame, although with what, it's difficult to say – Arthur opens his mouth to gape or –

Snape _strikes_. Arthur finds himself being spun against a greasy kitchen wall that probably hasn't been cleaned since Regulus Black died – he chokes, shocked by the numbing pain travelling down his back and legs – but Snape then descends on his mouth, burning fingers wrapping against the back of his neck and coming up to grip his head . . .

Oh, oh – Snape's kisses taste of scalded tongue and bitter grime, just as Arthur imagined they would, with the underlying tinge of saliva and unwashed, biting teeth – oh, Arthur kisses back as fierce as he knows, because . . . because this is a fire he has never felt – a map he has never read, and who knows how much time he will be given to study it before . . . flames . . . render it illegible . . .

"Severus," he gasps, hands grown bold enough to explore Snape's chest.

Black eyes flash in warning, and Snape drops rather violently to his knees, fingers and mouth zeroing in on Arthur's crotch –

"No," Arthur says with a start, "not like that, no." And at the disbelieving, almost insulted expression on Snape's face, he huffs in the tone he might use on one of his own children. "Come back up here. I want to see you."

Snape stares up at him, still offended and uncomprehending. Patience at an end, Arthur hauls him up by shoulders so sharp and thin they bite at his fingers. Snape tries to brush him off, but Arthur knows when to keep a firm hold. "Kiss me again," he commands.

Scowling, Snape lets his eyes dart in erratic directions. Disoriented, Arthur realises – disoriented, because perhaps . . . he's never done _this_ before.

Arthur raises a hand to that sallow, sunken face and cups it. "Like this," he whispers, lifting up on tiptoe to brush Snape's lips with his own. Soft caresses, and Snape is responding, slowly at first, then enthusiastically – his hands creep back to Arthur's neck, mapping the ridges –

The kitchen door bangs open, sending them scrambling apart. Oh Merlin, if Molly –

"It's just the house elf," Snape sneers.

Arthur takes in a breath, smelling – smoke and fire. "Good," he smiles against his skittering heart, and pulls Snape close.


End file.
